


the clownery

by greekdemigod



Series: Shibden After Dark [1]
Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Random-ass college au, Shibden After Dark, except obviously so much plot in this i mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:29:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23312404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greekdemigod/pseuds/greekdemigod
Summary: Known in Shibden After Dark circles as, "The one in which Anne Lister pulls up in a clown car and bangs Ann Walker."
Relationships: Anne Lister (1791-1840)/Ann Walker (1803-1854)
Series: Shibden After Dark [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676473
Comments: 16
Kudos: 79





	the clownery

**Author's Note:**

> no, i can't explain myself. it's really a "you should've been there" sort of thing.  
> but to tide you over while i can't continue lrfts until later this week, have some weird-ass smut.

There are better ways to spend a Thursday night than sitting crammed together in an absolutely ridiculous car that's creaking and groaning under the weight of all its passengers and the clownish decoration tacked on.

There are seven of them, logistically piled to fit, and they're all dressed in loose sheets bound to stay put. Anne feels pretty good about the silk ropes that she braided together and used as a belt to cinch the sheet around her waist. They have never left her bedroom before, since she prefers them within reach in her night stand, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Already they are mushed together to an unbearable degree of discomfort and heat, and soon they will be even more. They are en route to pick up Ann Walker in her very respectable, very suburban neighborhood to make eight out of their little party.

Anne is practically flattened against the window, which at least offers her a good view of the city they're wobbling through. They pass through a residential gate into the sort of place where not mowing your lawn every weekend gets you shunned from the elementary school bake sale.

All she really knows about Ann Walker is that she is a legacy kid at their school. Gotten most through being the daughter of an important alumni and having a sad sob story to put in her college application essay. She didn't think she would gravitate in the same orbit as her, but here they are. Booth wanted to go - both Booths actually, Tweedle Clumsy has been jockeying for the aux cord all fifteen minutes they have been putting their lives on the line not to have to take the city bus - and his roommate Washington is friends with the guy that's rumored to be sticking it up Ann Walker.

So prim and proper, Anne didn't think she had it in her to have pre-marital sex, but then again, she has been with the buttoned-up straight girls that remain uptight only up until she gives them enough compliments and kisses them so sweetly.

Being with those girls is the best, since seeing them thaw and melt gives such great satisfaction.

When they halt in front of a lavish house, the car shudders to a dead still with the sort of groaning rumble that something made out of mechanical parts should not be able to produce.

“Booth, I swear to God if we have to push this thing,” Washington curses, hanging over John's chair, his upper body leaning over the center console to look through the front window.

There's some jostling and elbows sticking in places they shouldn't to get to the door handles. They spill out unceremoniously, Anne only barely catching herself through muscle memory from seven years of gymnastics growing up. She dodges out of the way before she gets Eugenie in her lap (not worth it).

Anne's right at the front leading the charge up to the front doors. The Walkers have an old-fashioned knocker that echoes ominously through the space that lies beyond as Washington, adorable idiot that he can be, basically pummels it into the door. The bell gets rung three times, by Booth, Booth, and Beech.

She should get drunk before dealing with this troupe of toddlers next time.

Ann does not look like herself when she opens up. Rubbing through sleepy eyes, wearing only a faded football shirt that falls to just above her knees and a messy head of hair, she looks—real. Nothing of the meticulous outfits or the usual face of make-up, the careful way she presents herself to the world, but the girl stripped as bare as she can get without getting naked.

Although the creamy white calves peeking underneath the shirt help Anne further imagine what that might look like.

“What are you all doing here?” There is an adorably confused expression on her face, eyebrows knitting together above crystal blue eyes. “Whose car is that?”

“Booth’s family owns a party entertainment company,” Washington offers, but makes a hand gesture as if to wave the whole car away—as if that is at all possible. Broken down like this, tilting slightly sideways, it really looks just sort of sad. “And we’re here to pick you up. I texted you?”

“Oh, did you?”

Anne would venture from the way Ann opened the door that she was not at all aware they would be coming over.

Before they can fix that situation, there’s the pitiful whine of an engine not catching, and then John Booth’s displeased voice calling out: “Don’t think this thing can get us to Zeta Psi now.”

Ann takes one last look at their frumpy attires and falling faces and steps aside. “Come in. You can stay here as long as you need—my parents aren’t home.”

The Walkers have a mighty fine house. It screams old money through and through, from the wide staircase to the old-fashioned portraits lining the walls to the grand living room that has a giant wing piano in its center.

What they are pulled towards, though, is the backyard. All they see from inside the house is a faint reflection of still water, but it’s enough.

What’s better than a college toga party? A house pool party.

“I should get changed,” Ann murmurs, looking around. Anne seems to be the only one even paying her any more attention—the rest are picking their way through to the kitchen to go find the back door.

“You’ll hardly seem out of place in that.” She nods towards the jersey hanging loose on her frame. “Somehow less revealing than this.”

As she gestures her hands across her body, Ann’s eyes follow. A tinge of red blooms across her cheeks.

Oh hey now. There is no mistaking where Ann Walker’s eyes stray. Where they hitch. Where they skitter past not to blush deeper.

That’s interesting.

“And I think even in a potato sack you would look beautiful, so, you’re good.”

From this close, Anne can see that Ann has a constellation of freckles splashed across the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks. They trail down her neck and disappear beneath the fabric that once was a bright red.

What a shame to hide those under foundation every day.

There’s a loud splash behind her, the loud hollering of five men turning back into boys as they cannonball into the Walkers’ impressive pool.

“Are you sure it’s okay we’re here?”

Ann nods, then again more decidedly. “Of course. Do you want something to drink?”

“I think I should stay sober to keep an eye on them.”

They walk through the house and enter into the backyard through a home office / library that Anne wants to have a closer look at but can’t.

The terrace lights are on, throwing gentle beams of light over the pool and into the yard. Anne is relieved everyone has at least kept their underwear on, but six togas lie discarded by the edge.

She and Ann take a seat on lawn chairs. It takes some readjusting of her outfit and ultimately pulling the fabric up around her waist to have it stop tugging and shifting. The barest hint of her boy boxers seems to further fluster Ann, whose gaze flits away from her muscular thighs when Anne looks over.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yes, anything.” Breathless, vulnerable. Oh, Ann.

To think she has gone out of her way not to be around Ann Walker and her posse of dolled-up, dainty friends all this time.

She can’t remember when she was last this entertained by a singular person.

“What’s a girl like you doing being in bed this early?” She drops her voice a little lower for good measure: “Alone?”

“I—I’m—well, I... Goodness, that’s a question.”

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

Ann ponders that for a moment. Again her forehead crinkles and her nose crunches. Her cuteness is honestly refreshing—and weirdly hot.

She eventually counters with a question of her own. “You’re gay, right?”

“Yes.” No hesitation, no shame. She has been out so long, it surprises her sometimes there are still people she needs to come out to. Anne was sure everyone on campus knew after that slight scandal with Vere Hobart... “Why?”

“Well, I...” But it still comes so hard to Ann to say, apparently, and she has been there too.

Anne puts a hand on Ann’s knee, intended to be comforting, but Ann jolts at the touch and looks at her wide-eyed.

“Sorry, I just wanted to say...” She pulls her hand back before it kills the poor closeted girl. “It’s okay. If you’re gay or questioning, that’s okay.”

“I know.” There is some fight in Ann then, some stubborn set to her mouth, but the tension deflates as she sighs. “I know.”

And she sounds so defeated that Anne finds it within herself to let her bravado slip for a moment longer and take Ann by the hand. “I’ve changed my mind about the drinks. Come on.”

They hurry into the kitchen while outside none of the people in the pool seem to particularly care for their missing company. Within the confines of all the marble surfaces and gleaming steel appliances, with Ann fixing them a drink that’s three quarters some tropic fruit juice and one quarter Grey Goose, Anne re-initiates the conversation.

“Have you ever wanted to kiss a girl?”

A bit of the juice spills onto the counter as Ann's hand shakes. Her blush further deepens. “Goodness, how did we get onto that?” But Anne does not answer. She waits, watching, slowly sipping her drink until Ann finally, squirming, whispers, “Yeah.”

“Have you ever done so?”

“Oh no, no, I… no.”

She has to admit, Anne instantly wants to claim her first. It might be an ego thing (honestly, isn't it always with her?), but Ann is also so exquisitely endearing. The thought of someone else kissing her—someone like Ainsworth, or Hobart, someone who truly doesn't care but to get their way—she can't stand it.

Anne might be the one-night-stand king, but she cares. Especially about girls like her; impressionable, fragile, soft.

She brushes her fingers over the back of Ann's arm, and she contains the smile that threatens to burst as she sees goosebumps rise on her skin.

“Do you want to?”

Ann looks at her, fear like a little bird trapped behind her eyes. “Right now?”

“I didn't mean that necessarily, but… I wouldn’t mind kissing you.”

The tension between them shivers with anticipation as their eyes lock. Ann makes only a fraction of a movement forward, but Anne is made of braver stuff and sidles closer until they’re a hair’s breadth away from each other.

Ann leans so heavily on the counter that she can’t just dive in though.

“Hey, easy. We don’t have to.”

But then little Walker surprises her by grabbing onto the front of her toga and dragging her in. They collide messily into each other, all teeth and chins. Anne grasps Ann by the cheeks and holds her still, tenderly, and kisses her gentler.

Ann sighs out against her mouth, but her hands cling onto her harder.

She might never have kissed before, but she’s a natural—at least when she tentatively breaks out of her own shyness. With her thumb against her cheek, Anne still regulates the pace, the angle; when she pulls back, she keeps Ann from following so that she can take a look.

Pupils blown, blushing beet red, but smiling so beautifully that Anne will never be able to regret this.

They recoil back to each other and this time it deepens, and their bodies pressed together, the flimsy sheet of Anne’s toga and the silky fabric of Ann’s jersey all that separates them. It builds heat that sits trapped between their stomachs.

When Anne’s hand runs into long blonde hair and spools locks around her fingers, Ann’s body responds by pushing harder into her. They’re getting breathy now, the steady rhythm they’ve found interrupted by groans and breaths.

Anne halts when Ann softly whimpers.

The blonde is slow to realize Anne isn’t coming back this time, holding herself at bay with a hand on the edge of the marble countertop, and her eyes flutter open slowly to look at her. She looks so good like this, with her pupils blown and her mouth slightly open like this, chest heaving.

Anne equally got a little carried away with what was supposed to be a simple kiss just to claim Ann’s first. Looking around, she notices her gang of clowns is no longer holding the pool hostage. Several tracks of wet footsteps go over the tiles and disappear around the house.

She’s hot and pulsing, actually considering taking a plunge as well, but then Ann nestles against her again and the pool loses priority. “Anne.”—her name has never before been whispered like deliverance. Ann takes her hand and puts it on her thigh, and then there’s no more guessing what the imploring look and the nuzzling means.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Anne strokes her hand up and down the soft stretch of Ann Walker’s thigh, warm against her palm, sliding so effortlessly. Ann’s breath hitches every time she goes up, because every time she goes a little higher until her thumb touches to the dip of her inner hip.

“Do you trust me?” Anne whispers, kissing softly along Ann’s jaw, kissing the spot beneath her ear. When Ann nods against her, she lifts the girl up without much preamble, slides her arms under her ass, and holds her to her. “Lead the way.”

They stumble through the house, stop to peruse a flat surface to continue making out against, and then brave the staircase so that Anne can go throw Ann onto her bed.

She remembers, as they whirled through the empty house, that Ann is alone—no need to try and be quiet.

The toga’s in her way though, so she undresses herself first, dexterously untying the bondage cords around her waist so that she can let the sheet slide off of her. Ann’s eyes widen as she sees her moon-lit bare upper torso.

Grinning, she asks, “Like what you see?”as she climbs onto the bed. Her hands make quick work of Ann’s jersey too, sliding it up the curves of her stomach, her breasts. Anne is all sharp, jagged edges and flat, bold lines—Ann is soft, feminine, pliable.

“Yes,” Ann whispers.

“You can touch, you know. I won’t break.”

As she kisses across Ann’s torso, lavishing attention to her breasts, sucking her nipples between her teeth and grazing them lightly across, she feels wandering hands over her hips, her sides, touching along the hard line of her spine.

But despite being told she could, Ann never touches her any rougher than her soft fingers allow, and all of it is so searching and genuine that Anne feels electricity shock through her.

When was the last time she had someone be this gentle with her?

She nudges her hips between Ann’s thighs and moves them apart, settles between them. Pressed together almost fully bare, she can now properly feel how heated Ann has gotten, her skin flush with prickling static, her breath already erratic.

Ann Walker’s moans are so hot in how soft and frail they are when Anne rolls her hips down against her that she thanks the goddamn clown car for breaking down.

Ann moves back against her, nose scrunching as she figures out how to buck and grind to get the friction that feels good and Anne easily complies. It’s enough for now to get to bury her head in her neck and be enveloped in the soft sounds of Ann’s pleasure.

She feels damp arousal through Ann’s panties where she is rubbing herself up against Anne’s abdomen.

It grows slicker so fast, and Ann gets louder, thighs start trembling, and Anne thinks, not like this. She untangles a hand from Ann’s hair and moves it down between them, slides into her panties. Ann cries out and throws her head back at the first touch to her clit.

It does not take many more to dismantle her until she is pouring out over Anne’s fingers. Prim and proper Ann Walker, now a sweaty mess beneath her.

Anne is pulsing with her own need by now. She can usually last a good long time before needing to take care of herself, but something about how unpolished and real Ann is has her entirely unhinged.

Ann watches as she rolls her boxers down and off her legs, kicking them behind her onto the floor. But she halts her with a hand to the wrist when she is about to touch herself.

“Can I?”

Anne smiles kindly and leans down to kiss Ann. “If you want. You don’t have to.”

“I want to. Just—guide me?”

And fuck, that’s hot. She guides Ann’s hand between her own thighs, where she is equally slick with desire.

Ann’s facial expression flits at every new discovery, at every sound that tumbles from Anne’s mouth. She is rolling down against long, delicate fingers and every rough touch is another jolt, another wave of pleasure that tendrils through her.

When she needs both her hands to catch herself and keep from squishing Ann, the girl goes solo and seems to like it.

Anne sure as fuck likes the searching, wonderful rubbing and nudging, even when it edges into accidental teasing—usually more Anne’s domain.

Ann is so focused that she startles with the cutest yelp at Anne cupping her sex inside her panties and tracing one finger through her slick folds.

It gets messy again after that, uncoordinated as they’re both trying to focus on pleasuring the other but also grinding in search of their own release.

Anne can’t keep from crashing down on top of Ann when she comes, the force that wrecks through her turning her boneless.

They quake and tremble together, Ann’s face in Anne’s neck as she chokes through her second orgasm a whole lot less flatteringly than the first.

This is the sort of night Anne can’t forget. You can’t fabricate a chemistry and a desire like this.

With her arms around Ann, she rolls off the girl and pulls her into her side instead. All they do is breathe for a while, eyes closed, enjoying the lowly pulsing glow of happiness.

Ann breaks the silence to say, quietly, whispered against Anne’s sweaty shoulder, “I can’t believe that actually happened. I, uh, I’ve had a crush on you for a bit.”

“Have you?”

She nods in response and burrows deeper against her.

So maybe this won’t be a hit and quit it sort of thing then. Actually, she finds herself rather curious about what else concerning Ann Walker she got wrong.

“You know what I can’t believe? That I rolled up in a clown car to do it.”

“Yes, that _is_ a bit strange.”

Anne presses a kiss to Ann’s forehead and chuckles to herself. “Although to some people, it might make perfect sense.”

Weirder things had happened than that.


End file.
